~Onani Master Kurosawa Manga Review~

[Keyblade Master Roxas]

Onani Master Kurosawa



Title
Onani Master Kurosawa
Genre
Drama, Parody, Romance, School, Psychological, Seinen, Doujinshi
Author
Ise, Katsura
Art
Takuma, Yokota
Volumes
4
Chapters
31
Original Run
2005 to 2007
Keyblade Master Roxas Note:
In breaking someone, you break yourself.

Onani Master Kurosawa follows the life of the titular character as he learns this bit of truth quite devastatingly. But all broken things can be fixed, and that is another thing that Kurosawa Kakeru comes to understand.

As the manga begins, we are given a straight-forward, seemingly crude story built around perversion and fetishism. Middle-school student Kurosawa has an obsession. He finds himself every afternoon in the girls' toilets in school and while locking himself in there, he proceeds to masturbate.

Kurosawa is Holden Caulfield sent to Japan, made the subject of otaku and loser sex fantasies, and given flavours so that he seems like the bastard love child of Yagami Light and Lelouch Lamperouge. The side of him that appears to the be the latter is what drives the initial chapters of this manga, making this appear to be an unusual parody and tip of the hat to "mind game" franchises. It is the former, the side that makes you realize that Kakeru is just a lost boy, that saves it and captures you. It is the more human and flawed side of Kurosawa, and not his quirks, that makes Onani Master Kurosawa such a remarkably different sort of reading experience.

While the content of this manga may turn off a lot of readers, it becomes something else. The sexuality that is presented is not entirely meant to titillate. While it might amuse or offend with its controversial content, Kurosawa's masturbatory habits and fantasies are the subject of deep psychological drama. For him, this is not just tossing off and feeling relief. He depends on it.

His female classmates are enemies he must victimize. His fantasies are battle strategies. His semen is ammunition. His ejaculations are attacks. His orgasms are victories. Kurosawa is a helpless, petty and self-absorbed person with few pleasures in life. These sessions give him power, and he sees to it that it is done regularly. It extends far more than being a routine; it is an addiction.

Abruptly, things start to go downhill and very fast. In a turn of events, he is blackmailed by a classmate. Together, they exact some sort of sick and pointless revenge against those around them. The turn in this story, where we realize that this is not just about a pervert and a whack-job, is when Kurosawa questions the point of his crimes.

As a doujin, Onani Master Kurosawa does not have the professional touch of published manga, but that does not mean that the art is anything lesser for it. In fact, the general direction, frames and panelling are enough to shame some professional works. A considerable amount of the manga is meant donating time to the Yagami Light "Just as planned." facial expressions, which include close-ups and evil grins. The artwork itself is pencilled, shading is not achieved through toner or ink but mostly sketching. The character designs are generally good as well, with standard "school of beautiful people" characters, although one of the characters looks like Nabeshin, and perhaps that was intentional.

In fact, a lot of the parodies are intentional, though the characters break away from their initial stereotypes. Kurosawa especially starts off rather one-dimensional and by the middle of the manga, he turns out to be more developed than even the prototypes. Unlike the characters he is meant to parody, Kurosawa is completely ineffectual in what he does--a regular self-made nobody except to the one or two people who try to connect with him. His actions and mindset make him seem like someone with power, someone who can assert himself, especially when he engages in his fantasies. But the sad reality remains: he cannot do anything.

All he manages to be is a pathetic boy seeking his revenge by masturbating to vile fantasies of girls. THAT is his master plan, THOSE are his grand actions. He is a small person, insignificant, yet so much larger than life in the way he inwardly carries himself. Another sad truth remains is how much he depends on this justice--even he does not see how meaningless his feelings are on a larger scale. You realize what a sad lost little boy he really is when he feels the need to "win" against these girls for making him feel weak. It is not weakness. He has no idea that he feels affection. It is love that starts to affect him, and so warped, so jaded, and so cynical is Kurosawa that he cannot even understand that there is more to his actions than just lust.

What makes Kurosawa an excellent character is that by the middle of the manga, he has undoubtedly grown and shown us that there is more to him. His small victories become our small victories. He yearns and strives to be a better person. We can see bits of Kurosawa in ourselves. His disappointments become our disappointments. His heartbreak echoes the cries of those who have loved and had their hopes smashed.

The supporting cast is fairly decent, though Kurosawa truly drives the action. The most important secondary character is a sick, twisted little wretch who you start off feeling sympathy towards and who exposes her true self. But hating her is difficult, because she is merely an extension of Kurosawa. The rest of the cast consists of the ignorant, cheerful, and thoughtful love interest of Kurosawa, an otaku classmate who has such a warming, earnest and annoyingly optimistic outlook on people and life, groups of bullies and subjects of Kurosawa's fantasies.

Onani Master Kurosawa follows these characters as they explore such strange and cruel territory. A broken heart is suffocating, painful and destructive, but it can be repaired, and life can go on. School life is lonely and vicious, but not always. This manga constantly reminds the reader that there is no permanency. Things can change. We can change ourselves, save ourselves, and save others.

The largest downside of this manga is clearly one of the otaku audience's favorite aspects: the parodies and references. While this manga begins as Death Note: The Masturbation Chronicles or Code Girls' Bathroom: Kurosawa of the Rebellion, it suddenly grows beyond that realm. Yet the video game, anime and pop culture references are all abound, and it contributes very little to the manga. Why is the Hare Hare Yukai even part of this series? It appears to be a cheap but effective way to get an audience fast or to entertain them, and in many ways, it belittles the actual genuine humor and original content of the manga. Few parodies evolve, but Kurosawa is too good to just be constrained by its own parodies, since it never becomes satirical--it becomes an actual original piece of work.

A minor weakness is the feel-good, convenient sort of atmosphere in the end. This feels a little weak in comparison to all that came before. When it slips into the traditions of the rom-com (complete with a Christmas date and a tsundere), it is disappointing, since the manga went through its entirety without showing off those clichéd character types only to then spring one on us in the concluding chapters. Despite that, the ride of emotions that are experienced by Kurosawa seems to merit some reward. The downside is that it seems to benefit readers who like their conclusions gift-wrapped as well, and any writer worth reading knows that the work comes before the reader. The end message is one of hope, and at least it accomplishes the goal of showing that.

Flaws aside, Onani Master Kurosawa manages to be a manga that is truly one to experience rather than just read. It is a tale of trying to salvage bits and pieces of humanity while life seems intent on stripping away the humane.

J.D. Salinger says it best through the words of his misfit catcher in the rye: "What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them."

But as they say, you cannot hope to save anyone else unless you are able to save yourself first. Caulfield does not manage it, but Kurosawa does. He catches himself.